Europeans Need to Realize America Is Far Far More Than New York City, Miami, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Los Angeles
The most beautiful parts of America with the nicest Americans aren’t in crowded, smelly, over-priced, high-crime, drug-infested cities.
I’ve been fortunate enough to take my kids to Europe several times over the years. It has become a running joke among us that the New York Yankees must do an amazing marketing job in Europe given the ubiquity of Yankees hats you come across just walking around. Given baseball is largely nonexistent in Europe, I’ve asked Europeans how they became Yankees fans with many admitting they actually don't know who the Yankees are. It turns out they bought the hat when they visited New York City just to have the iconic “NY” logo. Whenever you talk to Europeans about traveling they’ve done to America, it virtually always ends and begins with New York City and Los Angeles, with a sprinkling of visits to Miami, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. That is why is wasn’t surprising that FIFA (i.e. real futbol where they play the game using their actual feet versus American football played using their hands:-) snubbed Dallas by awarding to 2026 World Cup Final to New York City/MetLife Stadium.
It is a shame Europeans don’t explore more of America, as they are missing the greatest parts of of our country by buying into the Left’s view of America that there is the East Coast and the West Coast with everything in between merely being “flyover country.” It would be like Americans going to Europe only to visit London, Paris, Berlin, or Rome. Those are all great cities, of course, and far more interesting than New York City or Los Angeles. I mean, those cities compared to their American counterparts contain literally two thousand years or more of history. Fortunately, many Americans wander well beyond those four cities to hit other great cities and countrysides. Personally, my favorite cities in Europe are Florence, Amsterdam, Montreux, Prague, Krakow, and Edinburgh. We’ve driven around the countryside in Germany, done day visits to small villages in Switzerland, visited Leiden and Haarlem in the Netherlands, and walked in the Scottish Highlands.
If you skip flyover country in America, you miss what makes America, well, America. Maybe that is why Europeans just don’t get the appeal Donald Trump and his America First agenda have for Main Street America. The fact that Europeans get nearly all of their news about America from CNN and The New York Times also explains their allegiance with our progressive Left. I hope they open their eyes (and brains) to see what they are missing by skipping most of America. That part of America includes:
Civil War Battlefields rich with history;
The majesty of Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons;
The iconic sculpture of Mt. Rushmore;
The sheer scale of the Grand Canyon;
The Music City of Nashville;
The beauty and fun of the Smoky Mountains/Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge;
Aviation history in Ohio;
The amazing Rocky Mountains in Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana;
LAS VEGAS!!!;
Rodeos in Wyoming;
Some of the best skiing in the world in Colorado and Utah; and
The coolness of the French Quarter in New Orleans.
It also includes great cities like Dallas, Salt Lake City, Denver, St. Louis, Charleston, Savannah, Atlanta, and Santa Fe. Many Europeans would be blown away if they attended a NASCAR race in Talledega or a college football game in Ohio Stadium. Over the years I’ve hosted groups of Europeans in Ohio and had the good fortune of taking them to a Penn State versus Ohio State game at night. With no exposure to American football, at first they couldn’t quite comprehend the magnitude of 108,000 people in a stadium with another 100,000 outside tailgating. By the third quarter, however, most had purchased Ohio State sweatshirts and were madly cheering for Ohio State using words like “our team,” “we,’ and “us,” as they smacked high-fives with strangers who had become their friends sitting around us. It was fantastic to watch their transformation.
It is true that too many Americans are rude and clueless when traveling abroad. It’s also true too few Americans make an effort to at least learn a few key phrases in the languages of the countries they visit, as they assume and expect their hosts to know English. But, it is just as true that Europeans demonstrate cultural bias and elitism by limiting their travel within America to the East and West coasts. Europeans, like progressive Left Americans à la Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, look down on Main Street Americans as deplorable, gun-hoarding, Bible-thumping, hillbillies who live in places not worth visiting. That belief couldn’t be more wrong. The most beautiful parts of America with the nicest Americans aren’t in crowded, smelly, over-priced, high-crime, drug-infested cities. Until they start exposing themselves to the real America, as most Americans do when traveling to Europe, Europeans won’t “get” America and why there is resistance to such things as funding NATO and Ukraine’s fight with Russia.
Speaking of Europe, the U.S. needs to get serious about how aggressively the EU restricts U.S. goods (and services) from the EU market. From our cars to our wines to our agriculture, the EU erects barriers to our exports. The EU also abuses the regulatory system to attack U.S. technology companies to protect its weaker companies. All of these trade barriers needs to come down so U.S.-EU trade can truly be “free.”
P.S. I take no joy from the fact that I’ve been proven prescient again. I warned shortly after the Intel project was announced with over-the-top fanfare by Mike DeWine, Jon Husted, and the unaccountable and typically wrong JobsOhio buffoons (see the unbuilt cracker plant in Belmont County and the defunct Peloton plant in Wood County) that it was a risky bet given that Intel was a company in crisis bleeding both market share and cash. I noted Intel was a “company of yesterday” trying to catch up with more nimble and innovative "companies of tomorrow.” Using $2 billion of taxpayer funds, Husted pinned his election as governor in 2026 on Intel delivering in 2025 so he could claim he was the Jim Rhodes of today delivering the Honda of tomorrow. Late last week, Intel officially announced what I had heard back in December that the big Ohio project was being delayed, with a new possible start date of “late 2026,” which would not help Husted in his gubernatorial run. It is unfortunate that Establishment career politicians in Ohio continue to throw taxpayer money at companies hoping to win the economic development lottery instead of doing the broad reforms that would benefit all of Ohio instead of just the Greater Columbus area. Those reforms include: eliminating the state income tax, repealing Medicaid expansion under Obamacare, enacting right-to-work, building a world-class airport like Denver did with Denver International Airport (#3 busiest airport in America), and streamlining local governments to slow local tax increases. Unfortunately, career politicians would much rather play the lottery with your money than do the tough work required to fundamentally change the direction Ohio is headed. They pay no price for being wrong, as that bill gets left entirely in our hands.
